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November 12, 2015

A little bit of closure

I
wrote my last post just about a month ago from the Bering Sea, and I thought
it’d be nice to write a final post about the cruise, now that I am finally getting
settled back in Miami.

The Healy,
back at the Coast Guard base in Seattle on November 3rd.

After
spending only a week and a half in Miami following our return from the cruise, on November 1st, Ryan and I flew across the country to offload
the Healy at Seattle’s Coast Guard
base. On the following day, the Coast Guard craned all of the vans off the ship,
including our beloved carbon van, which made us a little sad when we didn’t see it on the morning of the 3rd. We had previously emptied out and
cleaned the carbon van in Dutch Harbor, having moved all of our equipment to the cargo hold, which
made offloading the Healy in Seattle much smoother.

The nearly empty science cargo hold on November 3rd.

On
Tuesday the 3rd, the Coast Guard craned all science equipment onto the dock, where we organized our things into a variety of containers for
shipping back to our home institutes. Other than a little bit of rain that
morning, we had great weather for packing on the dock, and we managed to have
everything picked up and shipped by the end of the following day. I was
definitely relieved when my coolers of frozen seawater were dropped off at the
local FedEx, which arrived in Miami on the morning of the 5th, where
they will remain frozen until early 2016 when analysis will begin.

View of the loading dock and all of our equipment, ready to be picked up on the 4th. The Oceanographic Data Facility’s (ODF's) equipment is being loaded into the semi, en route to La Jolla, CA.

Overall,
it was a great week in Seattle, but I’m glad to be back at home in Miami, where
I’ve been enjoying Cuban coffees while working on my dissertation, in
addition to reconnecting with my Rosenstiel family and friends. My next Arctic
goal, following this post, is to put my cruise photos online, which I’ll be
posting a link to once they’re ready. For the time being, you can check out
some of Bill Schmoker’s great PolarTREC videos, or check out the
recently updated Arctic News page.

View of my institute, the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science on Virginia Key, with the City of Miami in the backrgound.

If
you’ve enjoyed this blog and would like to continue learning about the life and
science behind being an oceanographer and graduate student, let me know. Perhaps
it’s time that “Arctic Andy” becomes “Ocean Andy” so I can share all aspects
of ocean science with you, without being limited to the Arctic. Let me know what
you’re interested in by taking this quick (only one question!) survey.